Chromatic Lantern: Although I try to shy away from mana rocks with a CMC of 3, the fixing that this one provides is extremely helpful. When you want to be able to cast color-intensive cards like Bloodghast, Courser of Kruphix, and Reiterate in the early game, having all your colors is critical.
Clock of Omens: This card is useless by itself, but our deck has enough artifact density to make this explode. Clue tokens, global effects (Glaring Spotlight, Smokestack), equipment (ex. Lightning Greaves, Skullclamp), ETB artifacts (ex. Ichor Wellspring, Spine of Ish Sah), and creatures (ex. Myr Retriever,
Junk Diver
) can all be tapped without sacrificing their usefulness, and so you can use untap triggers for your mana-rocks and utility artifacts. Don't forget that you can tap your Treasure tokens this way too; while you won't be able to tap them for mana that turn, you can make them useful without having to sacrifice them.
Commander's Sphere: Like above, a CMC of 3 is not great. However, where it shines is that you can sacrifice it at any time to draw a card without tapping it. This can help kickstart some of our engines, and means that your opponents will not want to use spot removal on it.
Conqueror's Galleon
|Conqueror's Foothold
: Fairly easy to transform, this card both ramps and provides you with card advantage. Easy to get back in this deck as well if it ever gets destroyed, and in the worst case scenario you can use it to chump most ground-based creatures.
Executioner's Capsule: This is a rattle-snake card that synergizes well with our deck, and additionally it combos great with Glissa, the Traitor. A mediocre kill-spell that is also an artifact and sacrifices itself is more useful than it might seem in our deck.
Expedition Map: This card is great as it fills several roles. Besides mana-fixing by getting Command Tower or a filter-land (ex. Graven Cairns), it can also grab utility like Bojuka Bog / Buried Ruin / Drownyard Temple / Dust Bowl / Homeward Path / Kher Keep / Strip Mine. If you want a shuffle effect for Courser of Kruphix or Sylvan Library, you can grab a fetchland. Worst case scenario, you can get Canyon Slough / Sheltered Thicket to see if you can topdeck out of a loss.
Fellwar Stone: A great 2-CMC mana rock for EDH. Not much else to explain here.
Glaring Spotlight: This is mostly for protection that also doubles as tech against stubborn voltron decks. Since you'll usually have 3-mana up most of the time for Shattergang Brothers's abilities, the cost of this card's ability is very convenient. You can also easily recur it as well, and there will be exactly one game in your life where the unblockability will actually be relevant.
Ichor Wellspring: Provides insane value in this deck with cards like Goblin Welder, Trading Post, or even just Shattergang Brothers. Don't underestimate it and don't let your opponents exile it.
Lightning Greaves: Besides being obvious protection, haste also helps our creatures that tap or trigger on attack like Fauna Shaman or Conqueror's Galleon
.
Mimic Vat: Useful for providing sacrifice fodder, ETB effects from the imprinted creature, and a smidgen of graveyard hate. Another card I like as it scales with your opponents; if you use Teraston in your deck, you don't get to complain when it gets used against you.
Mind Stone: Another 2-CMC mana rock. However, while this one lacks the fixing that Fellwar Stone provides it has the benefit of a similar ability as Commander's Sphere. It isn't as flexible, but getting out a turn earlier is very valuable.
Mirage Mirror: While I don't think this card is good enough to be a generic EDH staple, in our deck it actually can be extremely flexible. Its main use is going to allow us to double-up on synergies and engine parts, but we can also find some quirky interactions as well. Besides general utility, we can: copy Mirrorworks, Rings of Brighthearth, or Strionic Resonator to let us go crazy with triggers; copy Goblin Welder to let us double-up on ETB/LTB triggers; copy Tireless Tracker to let us accumulate +1/+1 counters on Mirage Mirror; copy Buried Ruin to act as recursion, etc. This card also scales well with your opponents too, as the better their decks are the better this card becomes.
Mirrorworks: Although this is a win-more card, it's far too much fun to pass up. Having this out makes the potential of your engines exponential.
Nihil Spellbomb: Its effect is almost always relevant at any EDH table, it remains useful when sacrificed by other cards (ex. Goblin Welder, Daretti, Scrap Savant). Although there are more efficient ways of exiling graveyards, none of them have as much synergy as this card.
Oblivion Stone: Although this deck excels at removing permanents, it is always a good idea to include at least one boardwipe in a deck. Oblivion Stone acts as our wipe, and being an artifact that sacrifices itself lends it to synergize with what we want to be doing. For example, if Oblivion Stone was in our graveyard and we had a Goblin Welder out, we could wipe the board at instant speed on our opponents' turns. Just having this card out scares others from playing as much as they could: this is a win-win for us because if they do decide to overinvest then we can punish them for it, and if they decide to hold back then we can slowly start making our own board immune to the eventual wipe. Lastly, wiping the board with a card like Glissa, the Traitor or Myr Retriever out means we can get Oblivion Stone back to our hand.
Prototype Portal: Another win-more card, but gosh can this one be fun as heck. This card can be risky as you can easily be 2-for-1'd, so you have to be smart about which artifact to exile. Imprinting a mana-rock is a good default if you've already got a good amount of mana, imprinting removal like
Sylvok Replica
will grind you value over the long haul, imprinting Glaring Spotlight provides you with a steady stream of protection, etc. There's a lot of creativity to this card.
Rings of Brighthearth: This card is really incredible in this deck. A lot of people forget that it works not just for artifacts and creatures, but also planeswalkers and lands (technically enchantments too, but enchantments with activated abilities are very rare). This lets you eke out more value from your engines, and can help to sustain an incomplete engine that would normally need another card to be self-sufficient. Worst case scenario, this helps Shattergang Brothers lock down the board.
Signets, Golgari Signet / Gruul Signet / Rakdos Signet: 2-mana is the key CMC for mana-rocks (as it lets us get Shattergang Brothers out on turn 3), and these meet that bill as well helping us fix our colors and acting as sac fodder.
Skullclamp: As broken as it always is, and even more so with all the X/1's and sacrifice-matters cards in this deck. There's no greater joy than playing this with a Mirrorworks, Rings of Brighthearth, and Strionic Resonator out (you'll end up with 4 Skullclamps, and can Strionic Resonator the death trigger on one of them later).
Smokestack: I hate my friends. Works well with clue / token generators or anything that recurs (Reassembling Skeleton and co.). The majority of the time all you need is leave the setting at "1", although if you've got 2 or more recurring creatures / token generators, you can ramp it up to win the game faster. One trick that inexperienced stax players might not know is stacking the triggers correctly on this card: both abilities are separate and simultaneous, and the player who has priority when triggers happen gets to decide in what order to go in. So the turn after you play this, stack the triggers such that the second ability happens before the first, that way you always have to sacrifice one-less permanent than your opponents. Additionally, even in the worst case scenario you can always sacrifice this card to its own ability.
Sol Ring: Too stupid-good to not include in our deck, especially with so many artifacts.
Spine of Ish Sah: This card works really well with various aspects of our deck, and being able to destroy any permanent is very important.
Strionic Resonator: Because there are so many triggered abilities in our deck, this card is able to provide a huge amount of options for us at any time. Whether it's destroying 2 things with Spine of Ish Sah, drawing 4 cards with Sylvan Library, or even screwing over one player in particular with Smokestack, you're always going to have something relevant to do.
Summoning Station: The ability to pump out 2/2 creatures at instant speed is nice, but its second ability really makes it shine in our deck. Shattergang Brothers, Goblin Welder, clues and treasures, and even some of our mana rocks trigger this card. It can very quickly get out of hand, gumming up the ground very well and providing lots of fodder for Shattergang Brothers. Especially note that it is not just your artifacts but any artifacts, so activating the second ability of Shattergang Brothers is going to net you a ton of tokens.
Tamiyo's Journal: The ability to tutor can be nice and sometimes relevant in this deck, but really the first ability is the reason why this card is here. While it may seem mediocre since you have to pay for each clue, this is actually beneficial for several reasons: being able to stockpile a bunch of clues can help us both curve well and not lose tempo by wasting mana, being artifacts synergizes very well with our deck, and just having a reliable stream of tokens is very useful for us.
Tangle Wire
: A deceptively good card, especially since we are playing a very late-game deck. By using the trick described in Smokestack (except you want to stack the Fading before the second ability), we are always tapping 1 less permanent than our opponents, putting us at a huge advantage across those 4 turns. In an average game of 4-players, this will tap a total of 30 of our opponents' permanents while only tapping down 6 of ours (and since this card is an artifact itself and does not have a tap ability, this effectively means you're only tapping down 3 other useful permanents in those 4 turns). Additionally, unlike Smokestack this does not require a full round before it can do its job, as it starts affecting our opponents as soon as we pass our turn. This makes it extremely resilient to sorcery-speed removal, as our opponents' mana sources will likely be tapped by the time they can play a sorcery; additionally, our opponents likely won't want to spend removal on it as this card has Fading anyways. This isn't a problem for us however, as we can easily recur it with cards like Goblin Welder or Scrap Trawler.
Trading Post: Interacts well with almost our entire deck, and provides relevant options the entire game. Making chump blockers that can be sacrificed to Shattergang Brothers, recurring key artifacts by sacrificing creatures like Reassembling Skeleton, and providing card draw by sacrificing artifacts like Ichor Wellspring is insane value. And even though the life option is mediocre at best, just having the option can allow you to survive what might otherwise turn into a loss.
Treasure Map
|
treasure cove
: Early-game card selection that eventually becomes ramp and provides us with card advantage. I like to think of this card as an odd combination of an Aether Theorist that after three uses becomes a pseudo-Sunset Pyramid land. Very nice in conjunction with
Trove of Temptations
.
